Troyka are a trio of Mercury-nominated musician Kit Downes (Hammond / synths), Chris Montague (guitar) and Josh Blackmore (drums).
Electronically-augmented jazz has been around for ages, with varying results and some dubious offerings. On their third album, 'Ornithopedia', named as a consequence of Montague's debilitating fear of birds, the trio attempt to sidestep the failings of a lot of electronic jazz, offering everything from Portishead-style noir soundtrack motifs to muscular guitar-driven funk alongside more 'traditional' jazz reference points.
The album is stitched together by ambient textures that owe reparations to Brian Eno and the wonky rhythmic creativity of Autechre. Quite what this ambitious musical stew has to do with that fear of birds is beyond the understanding of this reviewer, but it works nevertheless.
The trio ran through three tracks from the album across the course of a brief set. On those tracks it was like watching three jet planes spinning wildly out of control, the players occasionally coming together to form coherent patterns while at others moments the result was like witnessing overlapping layers of independent vapour trails.
All the while the sound fluctuated from muscular funk grooves, wild Hammond stabs and occasional flurries of sun-drenched melodic guitar riffs that owed a debt to the likes of Bombay Bicycle Club.
'Arcades' was the strongest piece from the new album, rising up out of a bed of pure sonic alchemy and finally coalescing into a thrilling maelstrom of sound. By the end the track had settled into a proto-techno number before switching yet again into a taught funk formation.
This trio are at their best when they don't fall into predictable fusion motifs. Their blues-influenced number 'Crawler' sidestepped this by emulating the noirish atmospheres that belong on the soundtrack to 'Twin Peaks', while the set's closing number ('Rarebit') alternates between pushing huge blocks of impenetrable sound around and a sort of twisted Senegalese block party anthem conceived in the warped mind of Richard D. James.
Troyka may, at least nominally, be Downes' unit, but the leader here is undoubtedly the wiry Blackmore. With his skittering loops, beds of ambient sound, electronic percussion and deft traditional jazz drumming, watching Blackmore is like watching This Heat's Charles Hayward at his most intense, only Troyka's sticksman doesn't even break a sweat.
Words: Mat Smith
